The Memorial of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina
"Every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Don't you add to his words, Lest he reprove you, and you be found a liar. "Two things I have asked of you. Don't deny me before I die. Remove far from me falsehood and lies. Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that is needful for me, Lest I be full, deny you, and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or lest I be poor, and steal, And so dishonor the name of my God.
Keep me from the way of deceit. Grant me your law graciously!
The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of pieces of gold and silver. YODH
Lord, your word is settled in heaven forever.
I have kept my feet from every evil way, That I might observe your word.
Through your precepts, I get understanding; Therefore I hate every way. NUN
I hate and abhor falsehood. I love your law.
He called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them out to preach God's Kingdom and to heal the sick. He said to them, "Take nothing for your journey — no staffs, nor wallet, nor bread, nor money. Don't have two tunics each. Into whatever house you enter, stay there, and depart from there. As many as don't receive you, when you depart from that city, shake off even the dust from your feet for a testimony against them."
They departed and went throughout the villages, preaching the Good News and healing everywhere.
Padre Pio — mystic, confessor, stigmatist — spent over fifty years in a small friary in southern Italy, drawing millions to encounter God's mercy through his ministry. What's remarkable isn't just the extraordinary gifts he bore, but how he bore them: in hiddenness, in suffering, in radical dependence on God alone.
And that dependence is exactly what threads through everything we hear today.
The writer of Proverbs asks for something most of us would never think to pray: *don't give me too much, and don't give me too little.* There's an honesty in that prayer that cuts through our usual requests. We tend to ask for more — more security, more comfort, more margin. But this ancient voice recognizes something we often miss: abundance can make us forget God, and desperation can make us compromise our integrity. The sweet spot is need — just enough to stay tethered.
Notice how Jesus sends the Twelve out with exactly that logic made flesh. No bag, no bread, no backup plan. The instruction isn't about romanticizing poverty — in first-century Palestine, traveling without provisions was genuinely precarious. The point is that the mission itself becomes the provision. They go out with nothing so that what arrives through them is unmistakably from somewhere else.
Consider how this lands on an ordinary Wednesday. We carry so much — contingency plans, carefully managed images, the quiet conviction that we need to secure our own outcomes. The readings together push back gently: what if a little less insulation actually made us more available? To God, to the people in front of us, to the work we've been sent to do?
Padre Pio once said that prayer is the best weapon we have. He knew what it was to be stripped down and sent anyway.
What are we gripping tightly that might be worth loosening? Where in daily life do we mistake self-sufficiency for faithfulness? And what would it look like today to receive what comes — just what comes — as enough?